Following the release of the blockbuster adaptation Wonder Woman, Annapurna Pictures has released the first trailer for PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN, the biography of the man who co-created (with Harry G. Peter) the comic book character.
The film is the incredible true story of what inspired Harvard psychologist Dr. William Moulton Marston to create the iconic Wonder Woman character in the 1940’s. While Marston’s feminist superhero was criticized by censors for her ‘sexual perversity’, he was keeping a secret that could have destroyed him. Marston’s muses for the Wonder Woman character were his wife Elizabeth Marston and their lover Olive Byrne, two empowered women who defied convention: working with Marston on human behavior research — while building a hidden life with him that rivaled the greatest of superhero disguises.
Aspects of this tale were recounted in Jill Lepore’s excellent book The Secret History of Wonder Woman, and it’s pleasing to see that the film is embracing the more salacious aspects of Marston’s relationships. For a man who was known as the inventor of the lie detector test, he certainly kept a few secrets of his own. Early issues were filled with BDSM, submissive behaviour, and influences from early suffragists and feminists. The tale is as fascinating as the decades worth of comic book stories.
Directed by Angela Robinson, the film stars Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote, and Connie Britton. It is released to US cinemas on 27 October 2017.
